[HN Gopher] Home galleries are hiding in plain sight across Canada
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Home galleries are hiding in plain sight across Canada
Author : SirLJ
Score : 48 points
Date : 2025-04-20 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| The article vaguely alludes to why this trend could appear but
| unfortunate it couldn't devote at least a paragraph to it. It's
| such an important issue, but given that this the industry
| impacted is considered small and niche it's so under discussed.
|
| Decades of political opposition toward any and all redevelopment
| of existing low density single family dominated residentially
| zoned areas has meant that practically all creation of new
| housing in the major cities of Canada has meant greenfield sprawl
| or for urban areas, creeping into brownfield redevelopment,
| rezoning old industrial areas into new condo developments.
|
| The problem with this is that the arts and gallery system has
| long relied on repurposing old and affordable industrial space
| into arts production space gallery and performance space. So what
| we've been seeing as the housing crisis has become more severe,
| is an increasing amount of destruction and rezoning of
| irreplaceable industrial land, aiding a shortage of industrial
| space, badly wanted by the Amazon's of the world too.
|
| So artists are being squeezed on both ends. The shortage of
| affordable housing is especially severe for low income working
| artists, and the political solution for solving this problem is
| to destroy the artist spaces which makes things more expensive
| for artists too.
|
| This could all be better fixed if we simply left industrial as
| industrial and actually allowed people to more intensively
| develop residential homes to meet our housing goals, and add more
| arts uses into residential areas (because let's be clear,
| everything mentioned in this article is likely on the down low,
| breaking municipal bylaws and Provincial liquor laws), but people
| have been incredibly resistant to this, no matter how much they
| claim to love the arts etc etc.
| 2big2fail_47 wrote:
| great analysis! thank you
| babuloseo wrote:
| What are you talking about, there is no housing crisis in
| Canada?
| Etheryte wrote:
| Canada has one of the worst housing crises of the whole
| developed world. Housing crisis isn't just a lack of homes,
| it's a lack of desirable and affordable homes. Many places in
| world have an abundance of unused homes while also having a
| severe lack of homes people both can and want to buy. Most
| people don't want to live in the middle of nowhere where
| there are no infra, no services and no one else around.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Here's a solution for NIMBYism that could help:
|
| 1. Homeowners in functional local democracies block new
| construction because it reduces the prices of their homes
| in exchange for no benefit to them, but...
|
| 2. When new, higher-density homes are constructed the total
| value of all houses increases much more than the total
| decline in the price of all old houses. This implies...
|
| 3. There is enough money available in the overall venture
| of new construction to compensate previous owners for the
| decline in prices, and although there could be many ways to
| accomplish it,
|
| 4. A tax on changes in assessed value that can go negative
| if the change is below a threshold, where the threshold is
| set so that the city collects net-zero revenue from this
| tax, would result in lump sum payments from developers (who
| dramatically increase assessed value) to people for whom
| the growth in their home prices had been depressed below
| the city's average by a nearby supply increase (whose
| assessed value would increase the least in that year if
| there was any truth to their objections).
| crooked-v wrote:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy70y75v5l7o
|
| It's a shortage of 3.8 million homes in a country of 15.6
| million households.
| cyberax wrote:
| > The shortage of affordable housing is especially severe for
| low income working artists
|
| Once again, there is NO SHORTAGE of affordable housing either
| in the US or in Canada.
|
| None. Nada. Zilch. Nol'. Ling
|
| And that's important. A simple "not enough housing" problem is
| easily solved with "just build more".
|
| Instead, there is a shortage of housing _near_ _large_
| _cities_. And it can't be solved. Simply "building more"
| housing in dense cities makes it _worse_.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Isn't 80% or some other ridiculous percentage of population
| of Canada in large cities? If a large portion of your
| population is living in large cities and large cities are
| experiencing a housing shortage then it makes sense to me to
| say there is a housing shortage in Canada.
| graeme wrote:
| The issue with this is most parts of large cities are
| substantially less dense than incredibly livible
| neighborhoods such as the plateau area of Montreal.
|
| It is illegal to build such a neighborhood in 99% of Canada.
| People love it here, people start families here, tourists
| visit, it's quite, lots of parks and shops.
|
| And it's 3-4 as dense as most areas of most major cities. But
| we've made it illegal to build. For zoning, double stairway
| rules, minimum parking rules, setback rules, strict
| permitting requirements, and thousands of other things.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Canada's housing crisis goes well beyond just the large
| cities. It extends into small towns as far as the Yukon.
| dddw wrote:
| Great that this is a trend. Its also a long tradition in
| contemporary art. I had my staircase and hallway as a gallery for
| a couple if years.
| babuloseo wrote:
| Please donate to https://savethecbc2025.ca/ we need your money
| Americans to support our amazing Olympics coverage thanks!
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